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Sunday, November 1, 2026

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Altria: Dutiful

Altria raised 2026 adjusted EPS guidance to $5.66 to $5.74 and authorized more buybacks, while on! loses share as cigarette margins hold.

MO $130B
Invariant 2 clicks

From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

The Navy plans to buy more ships, and BWX Technologies $BWXT doesn’t charge a set price per reactor. $BWXT makes the fuel, reactor cores, steam generators, and other reactor components for the Navy’s Virginia- and Columbia-class submarines and Ford-class carriers. $BWXT now produces two to three of these reactors/year, Joe Miller, president of Government Operations, said at its Investor Day on September 29, 2026. The Navy buys under multi-year pricing agreements, so orders arrive in large blocks: → February 2025: $2.1B of naval reactor component contracts. → July 2025: $2.6B, including options. → May 2026: $1.45B, mostly long-lead material (parts ordered years before a ship is built) under the first of five annual task orders through 2030. → October 2026: $189M of naval fuel, to be completed by August 2027. $BWXT’s plants carry large fixed costs, so final pricing depends on how many ship sets (all the reactor components for one ship) the Navy orders, CFO Mike Fitzgerald said at Investor Day. The Navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan, released in May, calls for (1) “buying two attack boats per year for the next 30 years,” meaning Virginia-class submarines, (2) a new carrier every four years instead of every five, and (3) 15 nuclear-powered Trump-class battleships, per USNI News, the U.S. Naval Institute’s news service. $BWXT’s own read of the plan is naval growth of 4-6%/year from the existing ship classes. Each Ford-class ship set takes ~8 years to deliver, so ordering a carrier every five years left gap years with one ship set in $BWXT’s plants instead of two. CEO Rex Geveden said on the Q2 call that the four-year cadence takes out “that revenue bathtub that we’ve been going through” and has “a bigger volume impact than even adding a battleship.” The next carrier’s long-lead orders come in 2028, but Fitzgerald said at Investor Day the faster cadence won’t really show up in $BWXT’s numbers until around 2030. A Trump-class battleship would use one Ford-class reactor (a carrier uses two), so $BWXT could build the reactor on its existing lines, but Congress still has to fund the program. Fitzgerald said $BWXT’s 2030 targets exclude the battleship program, so congressional funding would be extra growth.
@KEDM_COM 2 clicks

KEDM.com on X

Qiagen $QGEN has had a new CEO (Jonathan Pratt) since Sept. 1. Let's see if he can bring some action. The company also recently confirmed it continues to evaluate strategic alternatives, with Goldman Sachs involved. There have been reports of takeover interest for a long time, with past reports linking Qiagen to Thermo Fisher, bioMérieux, and Bio-Rad. Qiagen is an interesting target given its leadership in nucleic acid prep, strong consumables-driven revenue, and growth areas like TB testing and digital PCR. The portfolio would fit well with major industry consolidators.
@convequity 3 clicks

Convequity on X

We exited $LITE at the start of 3Q26 and stayed out at the 4Q26 rebalance. Lumentum's exposure to AI optics is real, but it depends on design choices that are still open. 1. Lumentum is one of the suppliers of high-power lasers for external laser sources, where the laser sits in its own module and feeds light to the optics. Growth in AI optics lifts this business only as far as customers choose these designs. 2. Co-packaged optics (CPO) puts the optics in the same package as the chip. Some CPO designs keep external lasers, which suits Lumentum. Others move the light source closer to the package, or replace lasers with microLEDs, tiny LEDs used for short links. Wider use of these would cut demand for its lasers. 3. Laser and silicon-photonics technology built for LiDAR (laser-based sensing) is being adapted for data-center links, which could bring new competitors. We have added LiDAR exposure and will cover it in Part 2 or 3 of our 4Q26 rebalance series. 4. Optical circuit switching (OCS) connects fibers by steering light between them. Lumentum's MEMS switches use tiny movable mirrors and suit many ports, low loss and paths that stay in place for long periods. Designs that must change paths quickly and in smaller units are more likely to use silicon-photonics switches. MEMS should win a meaningful share, but probably not all of it. Lumentum keeps credible exposure to external lasers and OCS, but both depend on unsettled design choices. At the 4Q26 rebalance, that uncertainty was enough for us to stay out.

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FTAI 3Q26: Aero margins in focus

FTAI’s Aerospace Products margin rebounded to 31% as CFM56 module output rose, while Power deposits and contracted deliveries fund its 2027…

FTAI $20B
Stock Thoughts 4 clicks

CVX Earnings Review

Chevron’s Q3 revenue rose 35% to $65.2 billion and EBITDA 75% to $20.2 billion, while production trailed guidance and refining margins…

CVX $465B
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

SNY Earnings Review

Sanofi raised FY26 guidance after Q3 sales grew 14.3% at constant currency, led by 34.8% Dupixent growth; vaccines declined 6.6%.

SNY $108B
Cestrian Capital Research 1 click
T · short

At&t INC

AT&T’s stalled deleveraging and share repurchase case has prompted a bearish turn on the telecom stock.

T $144B
Value Investors Club

Microsoft's AI Boom Has A Cost

Microsoft’s Azure grew 48% as AI monetization accelerated, but doubled CapEx, largely for CPUs and GPUs, reduced quarterly free cash flow…

MSFT $3.9T
Yiannis Zourmpanos 2 clicks

TSOH Weekly Roundup (10/30/2026)

Markel spent $315 million repurchasing shares in Q3 as Thrive agreed to buy ADT for $7.6 billion and Hasbro cited rising adult toy demand.

MKL $23B
TSOH Investment Research 1 click

AMZN Q3 FY12/26 Earnings Review

Amazon reported $201.9 billion Q3 revenue and 39% AWS growth, while $220 billion in 2026 capex drove trailing free cash flow to a $42.4…

AMZN $2.9T
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

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